Trying to make an omelet with fried eggs

Red face, orange fingers

Look, I made it six and a half months without a full-on freakout. That has to count for something. What do you people want from me? Please stop looking at me like that.

It all started 10 days ago. We had been frantically trying to pull the house together to put it on the market so that we could put an offer in on what may be my dream house: a mid-century modern so cool I will have to start wearing foundation garments and drinking in order to impress it. But that Wednesday, my realtor pal called: They had an offer on the house. We were disappointed and a little relieved. We were only selling our house because of this sexy, sexy house with the big … backyard. Now we could relax. I could paint Eloise on the wall in our home. We wouldn’t be moving at 8 months pregnant.

Of course, she called that Saturday evening to tell us that the sale had fallen through and my lover was back on the market (I may fetishize inanimate objects. Don’t judge.). And so I spent the next 48 hours teaching myself how to clean a house, ruthlessly taking dozens of books to Goodwill and packing everything else that showed anyone had ever lived here and stowing it in closets, the basement, under my skirt. Apparently, when selling a 110-year-old house, it is essential that there be no signs it was ever previously occupied. It was just waiting for you, you cutie with the pre-approved mortgage.

I stood on my feet for 8 hours Monday, then came home and cleaned another four. By Tuesday morning, my feet were precious little waterlogged sausages, further complicated by another day of standing, followed by an evening event where apparently no one wanted to sit down for two hours.

By Wednesday, I was convinced I had pre-eclampsia. My feet were like the Pillsbury Doughboy: they squeaked when you poked them. Scarier still, in the bathroom that morning, a faint orange tinge showed up on the toilet paper. What fresh pregnancy complication was this?

I called my doctor at 8 a.m., and the nurse was more concerned by the orange toilet paper than the foot swelling. I asked two child-bearing friends at work if they had experienced swelling and each said no. The tears began to well. The orange spotting continued.

That afternoon, I called my doctor, mildly flipping out. The answering service connected me to him, and he told me that since the toilet paper wasn’t red, I could wait and come into his office at noon the next day.

And that’s where I was, as they calmly checked me out. Blood pressure: normal. Urinalysis: normal.

Perhaps it was the prenatal vitamins, my doctor said. But why would this start after seven months of taking them?

Finally he asked: “What have you eaten in the past few days?”

I told him, and he definitively responded: “That’s it.”

It was the Cheetos.

Rather than scolding me for all the chemicals I had willingly, eagerly ingested, my doctor added: “They’re really good, aren’t they?”

OMG, I totally want a doctor that says “They’re really good, aren’t they?” when I mention the Cheetos that I can tell you RIGHT NOW I will consume when I am preggo someday.

My rheumatologist understood that, “The vicodin doesn’t really get me high anymore,” meant that I was TRYING to say, “I’m concerned about building tolerance and getting addicted, what kind of alternatives do I have?” … I need reasonable health care providers in my life.